PARIS, Oct 8: Military action against Iraq is a last resort and must only take place with the authorization of the United Nations, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said on Tuesday.

“We must consider the use of force as a last resort — when everything has been tried to resolve the situation by way of diplomacy,” Raffarin told the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament, at the start of a debate on Iraq.

“There is no such thing as a clean war or an easy war... Let us think of the civilians, let us think of the humanitarian consequences for the 24 million Iraqis who already undergo sufferings that are an affront to our conscience,” he said.

Raffarin, who leads support in the Assembly for President Jacques Chirac, said French policy on Iraq was based on the need to ensure the unity of the international community, and the authority of the UN Security Council.

He said that Iraq “uncontestably represents a potential threat for the security of the region,” but he gave a clear warning to Washington of the risks attending any attempt to replace Saddam Hussein as the country’s leader.

“It is a fact: young countries have a tendency to underestimate the history of older countries,” he said, implicitly referring to the United States.

“The hypotheses surrounding a change of regime are marked by uncertainties, and France is not the only country to harbour very serious doubts on this subject,” the prime minister said.

US President George Bush has led calls for a single UN resolution threatening military action against Iraq and has several times spoken of toppling Saddam Hussein, though in a speech on Monday he said war was not inevitable.

Raffarin appeared to echo criticisms of Bush made by France’s previous Socialist government when he spoke in parliament of “those who develop the simplistic vision of good against evil.”

To these he quoted French poet Rene Char: “Evil always comes from further away than you realise, and may not die at the barricade you have chosen.”

France is pushing for a two-stage ultimatum, with a first resolution setting out tough conditions for the return of inspectors and, if necessary, a second one threatening force if those conditions are not met.

Under pressure from the international community, Iraq has agreed to the return of the inspectors, but there the Security Council is still trying to reach an agreement on conditions for their return.

Russia and Britain have indicated they may be ready to accept a French two-step proposal in a UN Security Council vote.

Raffarin said that while France believed existing Security Council resolutions already gave sufficient authority to weapons inspectors, it would accept a new resolution “if that seems necessary to... ensure the efficiency of the inspections, or even to fix deadlines.”

A second resolution threatening force would follow only “if the UN’s control committee certified breaches or serious violations, and these were reported to the Security Council, whose prerogative it would be to assess them... and take the appropriate decisions.”

In evoking deadlines, the prime minister made a gesture toward Washington’s wish to demand that Iraq present a complete list of all its weapons of mass destruction within 30 days, or face the consequences.

For the opposition Socialists, Jean-Marc Ayrault called on France to use its veto in the Security Council to block a tough draft resolution drawn up by Britain and the United States which contains a clear threat of force.

“Saddam Hussein is an evil and wily dictator. But once he agrees to bend to the will of international law, the US has no right to dictate war... The doctrine of ‘preventive war’ is just a hyper-power’s right to hyper-interfere,” he said.

The head of government did not comment on Bush’s latest speech, in which he called Saddam “a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction.”—AFP